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Look what happens when your England team doesn’t have any Gunners on the pitch.
England is ahead 1-0, Declan Rice comes off, Saka, Madueke and Eze remain on the bench, and within 3 minutes Argentina scores.
(Admittedly, it might have been that England became absurdly defensive, and was so focused on defending the box it wasn’t even closing down crosses, and they took off the main midfielder who closed down space and covered, replacing him with a fullback playing as a #8, but what do I know…)
I mean the both are the same thing really. We brought our Arsenal attack and then decided to not use it for some reason. I get Rice coming off, I don’t understand a single other part of Tuchel’s subs. Konsa coming on? Toney?? Madueke was fine all cup and you replace him not with Saka but with an out-of-position Rogers?
Konsa vaguely makes sense if he wanted to go to a back 5. Konsa is mostly a CB so putting him on meant switching to a back 5. He had to take off a winger to do that. Maybe if he knew James was coming off and Konsa was going to be the RB that made sense, but it seemed like he was putting him in with Reece James.
If you’re going to defend like that, you need an outlet ball. I hate to admit it, but Harry Kane is an amazing player. But, he’s not great as an outlet ball because he’s not fast and only mediocre at aerial duels and holding up the ball. Anthony Gordon had been that out ball, because he had the energy and speed to get in behind the defenders. So, without him, England had no outlet ball.
When Gordon went off and Konsa went on he already had an issue that he had a 3-man midfield without wingers, which meant it was very hard to stop the crosses coming in, and no outlet ball to get over Argentina.
Then he took off the RB and one CM and put on another CB and a LB? That meant he had effectively 1 striker, 2 AMs, one playing as a RW, 1 CM, 2 LBs, one playing as a LW-ish player, and 4 CBs.
Maybe I could see 2 LBs since Messi was playing on the right wing, but if you’re going to do that, at least have one of those two stick to Messi, not just hang out on that side. And if you’re going to have 4 CBs, you should at least not get beaten by crosses.
I’m positive part of the issue is that they’d never practiced like that. When would you ever have a setup like that?
Gonna miss Leo. A nice example of a player leaving the club with the blessings and best of wishes from the entire fanbase. Great player, great guy, and all round very successful signing.
Time to kick on with some incomings now!
Tuchel should be sacked ngl
If that’s the kind of tactical decision he’s making in a semifinal I would rather have Southgate back…
Hell, I know the players wouldn’t respect him but I’d rather have Jorn Andersen. At least he would make England fucking attack
